You may want all your wishes to come true, but more often than not life chooses to take its own course. One of these wishes may be for a long and healthy life. But the unpredictability of life may make this wish nothing but ‘wishful thinking’! Well, you may say that you are well protected through insurance, but ask yourself have you got all your bases covered? Insurance unless, specifically suited to meet the contingencies of life can be pretty useless. So, if you think that you don’t need accident insurance coverage, you may be grossly mistaken.

Accidents can happen at any point of time, but they usually strike when you are least prepared. While you cannot rule out bodily harm or even death due to accident, you can make provisions for coping with the financial impact of such unfortunate events.

So, what is accident insurance? It is basically an insurance policy which provides a payout anytime you suffer bodily harm, enough to prevent you from working, due to an accident. Once you receive that money you can invest it immediately to earn interest. So throughout the period of your recovery, your family is assured of a monthly payment which can cover, or at least, reduce the gap in finances (income v expenditure) left by the stoppage of your salary. Very few employers will be kind enough to pay your salary indefinitely while you recuperate.

Therefore, unless you are lucky enough to work for one such employer, prudence lies in getting insurance for yourself.

But now you may wonder why life and health insurance are not enough to take care of your family finances when you have an accident. Well, firstly, life insurance payouts can only be received when the accident kills you, because life insurance is nothing but death insurance! Secondly, health insurance will help you take care of your hospital bills and other medical expenses, but it is not concerned with how you will make ends meet once you are bed-ridden after a tragic accident.

So, the key is not to confuse between these different types of insurance covers. They all serve specific purposes and each one of them is necessary for you to breathe easy.

The next question which may provoke some thought is about selecting an accident insurance plan. There are numerous insurance service providers these days, but not are worth a mention. Any insurance company is known by its claims to payouts ratio, and even in the case of accident coverage, this is true. Generally established players are your best bet, given that their history of payouts is easy to track, but new companies may serve you well too.

However, whether you choose a fledgling company or an insurance behemoth, for your accident coverage, you must read the fine print very carefully before signing on the dotted line. Some companies include a clause or two in the details which if left unread, can cause you more harm than good. For example, you may find that accidents caused by the influence of alcohol or hazardous sports are not covered under a particular policy. So, it means that if you are a passenger in a car driven by a person who is drunk and gets into an accident, you may be involved in protracted legalities trying to prove that you were not aware that the driver was drunk.

If you do not understand the wordings of the policy details, get them clarified by company officials before you invest money. If you are satisfied with the terms offered by the company and their reputation then there cannot be anything wiser you can do than to get accident insurance!